A #BringBackOurGirls rally in America

For the past two weeks, it has led global news headlines, provoking rallies around the world. I have felt conflicted about this media attention. On the one hand, the campaign often flattens a painfully complex set of issues. The popular linkage of the kidnappings to activism for girls’ education tends to overlook the schoolboys slaughtered […]

For the past two weeks, it has led global news headlines, provoking rallies around the world. I have felt conflicted about this media attention. On the one hand, the campaign often flattens a painfully complex set of issues. The popular linkage of the kidnappings to activism for girls’ education tends to overlook the schoolboys slaughtered by Boko Haram in Mamudo, Gujba, and Buni Yadi. As a fad, it has given rise to outrageous attention-seeking spectacles like an American exercise group urging people to “Bring back our Girls” by sharing their P-square dance video, the American filmmaker Ramaa Mosly attempting to use the cause to raise money for her film on girl’s education, or phone entrepreneurs in Nigeria advertising a shortcode for #BringBackOurGirls “donations.” What will happen to all of this attention in a month if the girls are not back? Will it go the way of the 2012 Kony media blitz, which made American organization Invisible Children millions of dollars selling T-shirts and  $30 “action kits” before disappearing, while the Ugandan terrorist Kony remains at large?
On the other hand, the global social media and street campaign originating in Nigeria has put immense pressure on the Nigerian government, which had said very little publically about the abductions before last week, and has brought Nigerians out in the streets with the most passion I’ve seen since the fuel subsidy protests. Beyond all the politics of self-promotion, self-congratulation, and more-righteous-than-thou activism, this is a horror that all human beings should speak out against. That’s why when I heard that there would be a #BringBackOurGirls rally at the American Wisconsin State Capital in Madison on Saturday 10 May, I made my sign “A Dawo mana da Yaranmu” and went along. What I saw there deeply touched me, a group of around 200 people with mostly handmade signs who were there to show their support for the families of those abducted girls.
The organizer of the rally Adrian Jones, whose father is Nigerian, told me that she got involved in the social media campaign when she found very little about it in the American media. “I saw that people around the country were doing rallies. I posted a question on a facebook post, saying I wonder if Madison would be willing to do it. So someone said. Let’s try.” She involved the African Association of Madison (AAM) and the United Nigerians in Madison (UNIMA) women’s organization. Probably the majority of the people at the event were Africans. I talked to people from C’ote D’Ivoire, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and elsewhere. As representative of the AAM Board of Directors Caroline O., of Imo State, noted “We’ve seen overwhelming support from other African nations and even people who are not from Africa: Madisonians, other Wisconsinites, and US as a whole. A tree does not make a forest. If we are just Nigerians here, we will not have an impact.” For me, the importance of the event was the way it demonstrated the human ecosystem in which we live. What hurts one person should hurt us all, and for all its flaws, the #BringBackOurGirls campaign has reminded us of that.
Dolapo Sheryl Osinowo, an American Niger-wife said, “I want these nearly 300 families to know that there are millions the world over that are standing in solidarity for them. We are praying for them, and these girls will be returned by God’s grace.” This was a sentiment expressed by most of the people I talked to. Cameroonian Linda V., a PhD candidate in Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, told me: “Even though we are miles and miles away, it is important for the world, for Nigerians and for the girls especially to know that we stand with them.”
Chinwe M. a healthcare giver from Anambra State told me. “When we first heard this news it was heartbreaking. Being the mother of a girl, I felt so bad because in my place they say ‘when the eye is crying, the nose is crying too.’ If it it is my own daughter among those people missing, what will I do? So the least I can do is to come out and show my own support for the group of Nigerians as a whole.” Chinwe’s fifteen-year-old daughter Cynthia, a student the same age as many of the girls, held a sign reading, “Real men don’t buy Girls.” When I asked if she had a message for anyone in Nigeria, she said “To the girls, just hang in there. Just keep your family in mind and to Boko Haram, those could be your daughters. It is disgusting. It is unacceptable. I
An Education graduate student, Yinka, told me “I have two girls, myself, and I cannot just imagine what the parents are going through right now, so I came out here to show my support and show my empathy for the parents. And that devilish Boko Haram, they need to release these girls. If they refuse to repent before it is too late, God will rain judgment on them.”

Yacouba Sibi, a business student from Cote D’Ivoire, told me “I came to support Nigeria because what is happening is not acceptable. I know that if it happens in Nigeria and there is no reaction then tomorrow it may be in another country and then tomorrow my country. I’m a Muslim too, and this is not something that is taught in Islam. This is against religion, any kind of religion.” Similarly, Sadat A. a nurse practitioner from Edo State, Nigeria, told me, “I am Muslim. In my Qur’an, Islam said seek education. So in Islam, women are very educated.” She mourned a Nigeria where “Muslim and the Christian we all lived together. We worked together. We laughed together. We shared food. We just want to be able to put a stop to it and have these guys back safely.”
Organizer, Adrian Jones said to Nigerian readers, “You are not alone. People in Madison, Wisconsin, we are rallying with you. We are standing with you. Just because it happened in April does not mean we have forgotten, nor will we forget. We will continue to do our best effort possible.”
In response to my question about the faddishness of the cause, Iliya Amaza, a medical doctor from Borno State, told me that he was grateful for the attention: “Some may not have the whole details of what’s going on, or may not appreciate the degree of atrocities being committed. But then as long as they are coming out and adding to the voice, to me it is all good. We’ve waited for 5 years now for the world to be aware of what is going on. Thousands of people have died and not just in mass coordinated attacks but also in a lot of individual attacks: both the rich and the poor, people from all parts of the country. Although this is the tip of the iceberg, I’m glad it has garnered international attention.”
As I walked past the capital with my sign after the rally had ended, I was stopped by bystanders who had heard the news. An elderly woman working as a cashier at a pharmacy anxiously asked me if there were any new developments, a woman shouted out of the window of her car, “Yes, bring back our girls.” A truck driver told me he wanted the girls and their parents to, “Stay strong. Believe in God.” A Syrian doctor in the U.S. for a short course told me about the devastation Syria has suffered. He has not heard from his family for a month, but he too felt for Nigeria: “Those bastards Boko Haram are not Muslim. Muslims are peaceful. They should bring the girls back to their families. They are just innocent girls. To the Nigerian people, we support them. We hope for peace in Nigeria and we hope those girls will come back.”
I paused when I heard a man standing on a street corner singing a song of heaven. He had no visible audience—just the wind and his reflection in a mirrored window of a bank. Michael Arms told me he had not heard about the abductions, yet his wistful song tapped into the human longing lingering in the air after the rally ended: “There is coming a day/ when no heartache shall come/ No more clouds in the sky/ No more tears to dim the eye/ All is peace forever more/ On that heavenly golden shore. […]There’ll be no sorrow there/ no more burdens to bear/ no more sickness, no more pain, no more parting over there./ What a day, glorious day that will be.”
Allah ya kawo mana zaman lafiya.